Sale and clean up

Winter Reflections 6x6 oil, copyright 2011
SOLD!

Last year in the winter I painted a series of little 6x6 oils landscapes for practice and fun, including this one.  A few have sold and the rest have been decorating my studio walls.  Over the summer I decided to enter this one in the Preble County Fair on a whim - it looked the best in the gold frames I had.   It seems I chose wisely, as it won second place in the oil category.  Smaller pieces often get overlooked, so this was a pleasant surprise.  

Feeling rather confident about its reception - I received a number of compliments from fairgoers and my fellow artists - I then decided to hang it in the gallery at the Preble Fine Arts Center.  This week I went to pick up my pieces and was told that it had been sold to one of the those artists.  Having another artist purchase a painting is wonderful pat on the back, thank you Kathy!  Here is the original post on this painting.

Unfortunately work in the studio lately has been slow as life sometimes gets in the way of inspiration, so I took advantage of a temporary lull to clean my studio to see if that would help.  It did, and I have been working on a larger piece which is going very well and will post about soon.  It's amazing how much easier it is to work when you can tell your blues from your oranges.

Playing with pastels

Round Chair 16x20 pastel, copyright 2011

As promised, here's a look at my play with the new pastels.  This was a fun one with no expectations going into it.  The goal here was just to experiment and see what would happen with new pastels and a new surface.  The pastels are Sennilier half sticks, a set of 80 landscape colors.   I've used them before as I also have a set of 40 random colors, but it's nice to have a larger variety.  Sennilier makes a total of 500 colors, though I'll have to win the lottery before purchasing the full set.  They are very soft in texture and flow easily over the paper but also break easily - one has already been dropped and broken.  But that's okay, it still works!

The paper is black Canson pastel board, coated with Colourfix pastel primer, 16x20 in size.  The board has a large tooth to it and the primer has a very fine texture - the combination works very well for lots of layers.  And I worked in a lot of layers.  In a few places I blended and/or took off pastel with a paint brush.  I also blended with my fingers.  At one point I lightly sponged the surface with a wet rag then moved the damp pastel around with fingers, coating it with more pastel after it dried, which made an interesting texture on the wall behind the chair.

I'm pleased with the results, these soft pastels are perfect for large areas with minimal detail.  Combing them with a harder pastel, and a bit of fixative between layers, should work well for me in a larger format.  This is the first time I've worked with the Canson paper/pastel primer combination and the first time I've worked on a black surface, and I like how deep the darks can get.  I think it will all work quite well for me.

Happy Holidays

Hope everyone's holidays have been as joyous as mine.  Nothing beats spending time laughing and loving with family.  Mine was very good to me in the gift department as well.  I received a brand new set of 80 landscape Sennilier pastels and have played with them a bit already.  The results will be posted in the next day or so.  I also got a wonderful book, the companion to an exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  All pastelist are big fans of Degas, as he was instrumental in elevating the medium as a serious art form.  Although I didn't get to the actual exhibit, the book is the next best thing, offering insights into his thought process and including rarely exhibit pieces from private collections.  I'm really looking forward into curling up with it and a cup of tea.

The Dayton Daily News also had a brief article about the upcoming Life Drawing exhibit, and included a quote from yours truly.  I also sent in a photo of one of my pieces, but that didn't seem to have made it into the paper.  It's an uphill battle for attention for small art centers, and for emerging artists such as myself, so I was happy for all of us.

Snowbound and Shaded Lane - SOLD!

Snowbound, 9x12 pastel, copyright 2010

I'm not normally one to put much into New Year's resolutions and wishes, but lately I've been wondering if there's something to them.  This year I talked about ideas for what I would like to see happening in the next 12 months and even wrote a few of them down - "putting it out to the universe" as one friend calls it.   Oddly enough, shortly after I did that things started to happen.  A college friend's parents emailed me to say they wanted to buy Snowbound, and were interested in two other pieces.  Less than a week later, another friend expressed an interest in Hayloft; she's currently saving up for it.  A week after that another friend asked for a commission, my first one.  And then last night I arrived at Life Drawing for the first time in probably six weeks to find that another artist had bought one of my pastels in the Starving Artists show, Shaded Lane.   It seems I am finally expanding beyond family and close friends, which makes me think that after 3 1/2 years of ups and downs since I decided to see if I had what it takes to become a professional artist, I'm finally getting some results.  It's a good feeling.  A very good feeling.

Shaded Lane, 9x12 pastel, copyright 2010

Up and Down Day

Good news and bad news came today.  The bad news first:  I recieved a rejection letter in the mail today from the Cincinnati Art Club's annual show for my oil, Oranges in a Black Bowl.  There were over 350 entries and only 70 spots, so it's a pretty competative venue.  This was my fisrt attempt to get in, I'll give it another try next year.  I'm thinking about entering it into the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum show, along with Sunflowers.  It will be my second attempt for that show.

The good news came in a box in the form of new pastels.  I was a little leary of ordering pastels on the internet because I like to look at the colors in person, but my choices came out just fine.  There was a lack of dark, saturated colors in my collection, so I chose some rich browns and purples along with a few greens - a landscape artist can never have enough greens!   Some of the colors are from brands I have not used before, so it should be a good way to try them out.  I may be tempted to go back and touch up some earlier pieces, especially with the purples and browns to make excellent, deep shadows.